Sunday, October 12, 2008

Halloween Bookworms

When the air gets colder and the days get shorter, you know that Autumn is here. The cold and the darkness also encourage more indoor activities. Tops on the list for me is reading. Last year I posted my favorite reads for October. I usually like to read creepy, scary or other generally Halloween related stories at this time of year. Not only do I like to read for myself, I especially enjoy, reading to the kids. Each of our kids has a veritable library of books. Early on, Lady Di and I thought that books and reading should be important to raising our kids. That's why we just can't say no to any book order forms from school, any book fairs they have or any garage sale practically giving away books. We give books to the kids for gifts and make regular trips to the library. All of these activities have led up to an avalanche of books in our house.

Part of our book organization is to keep some seasonal books separate from the rest. We have Christmas books, Easter books, Thanksgiving books, Spring books and Halloween books each in their own basket. This makes it easier to choose our favorite books during certain times of the year.

Here are the books we are reading for October.

Sweet Pea is starting to read some books herself, but still likes us to read them to her at bedtime. Her list includes, The Little Old Lady Who Wasn't Afraid of Anything, Spooky Hour, Clifford's Halloween, Kick-a-Lot Shoes and Happy Haunting Amelia Bedelia. Her number one favorites are Pumpkin Soup and Skeleton Hiccups. My favorite part of Skeleton Hiccups is when I get to yell, Boo! , when the ghost is trying to scare the hiccups away. I usually turn the previous page extra slowly to build the suspense and I try my best to jump out of the bed when the explosive Boo! is released.

Most of these books were enjoyed by Number One Son when he was in the single digit age group. Now that he is into his double digits, he has moved on to more challenging and somewhat scarier stories.

This year he has discovered R.L. Stine. He checked out The Haunting Hour from the library and tore right through it. We just finished Scary Stories for Sleepovers and have started the second Harry Potter book. We do have some Goosebump books for later in the month too. Even though he has graduated to chapter books, he will request an old picture book, The Vanishing Pumpkin, every once in a while.

One last family literary tradition is most years, Lady Di will receive a book from her favorite author for our anniversary. She loves to read Nicholas Sparks books and usually finishes them in a few days. For Halloween they are not very scary, but many of his books seem to be released around this time of year. So I will include him in our October reading list.

With the outside weather matching the settings in our Halloween books, it seems to make the dreary days more interesting and fun. It also makes the reading more cozy as we have to cover up with blankets and get close to take turns reading the pages. Well, it's time to start another book. Maybe today we will read in a dining room chair tent or outside in the clubhouse. Wherever we decide, we can't go wrong reading.

We are a book loving family as well! We actually don't have television so encourage Lukas to bring us books to read to him all the time. We have loads of books so far and too can't resist used books that we find.

I'm happy to say that we're a family of readers, as well. Both of my older kids enjoy participating in their school's Battle of the Books competitions, where students team up and read a list of about 20 or so books over the course of a few months. Then, at the end, they compete in a gameshow style competition. Very cool, and gets the kids interested in reading carefully and actively for retention, rather than passively.

Yo making a reciprocal visit to your blog. I envy your choice of children books.........in Singapore we don't have that much choices. Have been looking around. Probably have to order from Amazon. Anyway, you must be a lucky father, your kids have that sparkle in their eyes!